Hayday: Debate over celebrating Canada's 150th may just be a sign we're a healthy democracy

Revellers celebrate the Fête Nationale in Montreal on June 24. In the 1960s and '70s, St-Jean-Baptiste Day became an explicit political counterpoint to July 1.PIERRE-PAUL POULIN / PIERRE-PAUL POULIN / LE JOURNAL

Ottawa is set to be “party central” for events marking the 150th anniversary of Confederation and the city is abuzz with preparations. But there is active debate across the country about how celebratory Canada 150 events should be, about the ways they have been framed so far, and even over whether Canada 150 should be celebrated at all.

The Parti Québécois has launched a counter-celebration called “L’autre 150e” to highlight how Confederation has been bad for Quebec. A CBC piece recently highlighted Indigenous artists who have called this a “celebration of colonialism,” and an ingenious designer has been marketing T-shirts with the Canada 150 logo inverted over the words “Colonialism 150.” Some have questioned the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on sesquicentennial-related infrastructure projects and activities, while some MPs have decried the seeming exclusion of Canada’s history from the central narrative of this year.

Should organizers in Ottawa be concerned that this celebration has gone completely off the rails?

Well, perhaps not. When we consider the history of how Canada has been celebrated, whether through spectacular anniversaries such as the Centennial or through annual national holidays such as Canada Day, we see that controversy and contestation have always been present. It would be more surprising if there weren’t active debate about Canada’s past, or the path forward from here.

Dissent about celebrating Canada goes back to the early years of Confederation. Debating an 1869 bill about making Dominion Day a public holiday, Nova Scotia MPs argued that they would rather make it a “day of lamentation” because it would emphasize their powerlessness in the House of Commons. The bill was withdrawn, and the idea was not revived again until 1879.

In the 1920s, following the passage of the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act, British Columbia’s Chinese communities organized Chinese Humiliation Day events as a counterpoint to Dominion Day festivities. They wore badges stating “Remember the Humiliation,” organized speeches and distributed leaflets, all with the aim of overturning this legislation, which banned Chinese immigration to Canada.

In the 1960s, organizers of the Indians of Canada pavilion at Expo 67 designed the exhibit to provide a counterpoint to the celebratory atmosphere of the centennial, highlighting issues such as language loss through residential schools. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Québécois sovereigntists transformed the more religiously oriented St-Jean-Baptiste Day events of June 24 into explicitly nationalist Fête Nationale events as a rival to Dominion Day events. Québécois artists took sides by deciding at whose party they would perform. Dissent from a “master narrative” of Canadian identity or a patriotic celebration is nothing new.

Yet these events also have potential for changing the way our country functions. Governments have used them to set the tone about what Canada could be, rather than simply celebrating what it has been. As part of the 1927 Diamond Jubilee celebrations, the postmaster-general introduced a series of bilingual stamps, which helped set a precedent for the gradual introduction of bilingualism in federal institutions. The narrative of Canadian identity that has been part of the Dominion Day and Canada Day events organized by the federal government since 1958 has been dramatically transformed from a starting point anchored in a militaristic, British-centric approach to Canadian heritage. Over the decades, it has changed to promote a bilingual and multicultural Canada, moving from explicitly assimilationist and colonial ways of presenting Indigenous communities to ones that highlight the importance of Indigenous cultures and languages, and offer hope for reconciliation in the future.

While the ways that Canada is discussed in official speeches on a Parliament Hill stage may mask ongoing deep problems in our society, these events can also signal key symbolic shifts from the past, and possibilities of change in the future. And although it is commonplace to dismiss Canada as a relatively young country by global standards, 150 years of a stable, democratic, multinational federation is nothing to be sneezed at.

Canada’s political nationhood is a process that requires constant renegotiation and dialogue, if we are to sustain the capacity to continue to live together as a political community. The controversies that surround Canada 150 may well indicate our desire to perfect and improve this country, rather than consign it to the dustbin of history.

Matthew Hayday is a history professor at the University of Guelph and editor of Celebrating Canada, volume 1: Holidays, National Days and the Crafting of Identities. On Feb. 21, Prof. Hayday will be featured in a Big Thinking event on Parliament Hill, sponsored by the Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences, and open to the public.

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